In this, the century of the spa, there is no shortage of surreal health destinations. But none quite beats the curative chutzpah of Via Krupp.

Since the Roman Empire the island of Capri has been a luxury retreat for convalescence and rejuvenation, rooted in a few basic principles of good health. Here the hilly walking is key.

Sea air and steep slopes worked well for the constitution of a young Augustus, and 2,000 years later the tradition is back in fashion.

Carved into a coastal cliff face on Capri, Via Krupp is a path comprising nearly a mile of elegant hairpin bends that zigzag almost on top of each other. It is a vigorous walk; Krupp, a peculiar German industrialist, had it built to provide exercise with a view.

But he and his Neapolitan designer, who toiled on it from 1900 to 1902, ended up with far more than an Edwardian equivalent of TV with a treadmill. Sweeping down from the Gardens of Augustus to the Marina Piccola, the path offers uninterrupted views of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Faraglioni — Capri’s signature rock stacks — and stunning sheer cliffs.

It has been described as the world’s most beautiful road, while Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Thomas Mann and F. Scott Fitzgerald all walked the walk, and sought its inspiration.

A landslide in 1976 forced the closure of Via Krupp, leaving it out of bounds because of the risk of rockfalls for more than three decades. After £5.5million of reconstruction work, it re-opened last summer, only to close promptly for a final securing. Now all its 1,420 yards is open again to again give calves and hamstrings an invigorating stretch.

The island’s obsession with legs does not end there. Farther up Capri’s hills is Anacapri, a smaller and less showy collection of beautiful whitewashed houses and walled courtyards.

And here is a modern contender for the Krupp mantle: at the luxury Capri Palace Hotel & Spa is La Scuola delle Gambe — the Leg School.

The school, based in a lab-like two-storey building, is run by Professor Francesco Canonaco, a paediatrician turned specialist in vascular conditions of the lower limbs.

Here health and celebrity mix seamlessly, as the world’s athletes, models and film stars turn up for an overhaul of venous circulation, lymphatic drainage and water retention and some preventive measures against cellulite.

According to Tonio Cacace, a veteran observer of island life, exercise and nature are once again the modus operandi of a healthier, less appearance-obsessed Capri — “a revolution that ten years ago nobody could have imagined”.

The journals may not be packed with research papers on the subject, but my legs certainly felt tighter after a treatment there.

And when Gwyneth Paltrow or Elizabeth Hurley needs to make a red carpet appearance, a quick trip to the professor has been known to add polish to their pins.

A place in Capri’s healthcare pantheon seems assured: if it’s effective, expensive, eccentric and a magnet for glamour, it’s just as Krupp — and the Romans — would have liked it.

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